Snap
by karebear
Summary: "Do you know what the noble houses did to ensure that they found the Allomancers among their children?" By the time he meets Vin, Elend knows full well that there's no practical difference between nobility and skaa. He's known it for years.


_"Do you know what the noble houses did to ensure that they found the Allomancers among their children?"_  
_"They had them beaten," Vin whispered._  
_Elend nodded. "It was one of the great, dirty secrets of so-called noble life... I vividly remember mine."_  
- The Hero of Ages

"Useless boy," Straff spit. His voice was low murmur but certainly – intentionally – loud enough for young Elend Venture to hear, even without the tin he'd proven incapable of burning. The boy moaned and strained for breath, pulling in air with shallow gasps as tears leaked from eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to stop the world from spinning. His ears still rang, and his stomach heaved. He coughed helplessly, feeling his throat constrict with dry, rough pain as he expelled blood-mixed spittle. He whimpered, barely managing to pull himself to his knees in time to vomit onto the hay below him, for the third time, or maybe the fourth. He wasn't certain anymore. It seemed that every time he thought there was nothing left in him, he was proven wrong.

"What should we do with him, my lord?" one of the household guard asked nervously.

Elend shied away from the voice, despite knowing that his father would only see it as another failure on his part. It made him look insufferably weak to flinch away in fear from any man, especially a servant. Yet that meant little to an eleven-year-old held down, helpless to fight, as this man and two others beat him mercilessly with fists and kicks and hardwood dueling canes designed to shatter bones. As the blows rained down, Elend's screams choked by the leather they'd stuck into his mouth to bite down on, he'd prayed for an end to the torture, begged for the power the ordeal was meant to bring out in him. For if he Snapped, then his father would be satisfied and the pain would end.

Of course, Elend _wasn't _an Allomancer, which he'd insisted desperately before the beating ever started. His pleas went ignored of course, for there was no way of knowing except to force the latent power out; everyone knew that a Mistborn could only come into being when a person was brought to the edge of death and somehow managed to survive.

Elend had never actually _met _a Mistborn; as far as he knew, no one had. Every House had one or two, of course, but Lord Venture kept his Mistborn hidden. Elend had never seen them, and he heard only unconfirmed rumors of their activities. Elend didn't _want _to be a Mistborn, didn't even want to be a simple Allomancer, capable of burning only one metal. His father cared little for what the boy wanted, the Lord cared only for the usefulness of those below him, which was everyone except for the Lord Ruler himself. And maybe the Steel Ministry.

Elend had watched from Keep Venture's many hidden alcoves and balconies as his father conducted his business with the Lord Ruler's representatives, come to collect their shipments from Lord Venture's mines and ensure his obedience to their Emperor-God. Of course, Elend's father _was _a Tineye, capable of enhancing his senses far beyond the capabilities of a normal man, and Elend could never hide from him. He was punished often for listening in on private conversations, but Elend was well-trained in the twisting manipulations that made up life among the noblity in Luthadel; he knew that even as his father calmly lectured him about obedience, instilling more fear with his quiet, forceful presence than any violent screaming could manage, that the old man _wanted _the boy to see him standing toe-to-toe with obligators and Inquisitors, never flinching.

"Take him to his rooms," Straff ordered, in answer to the guard's question. He sounded bored, and he didn't so much as glance at his young son, collapsed on the floor of the stables – there was after all, no sense in dirtying the house itself with such unpleasant business, literally or figuratively. Elend's blood and piss and vomit would be ignored out here, and disposing of his body would've been a simple thing, if he'd had the misfortune of _actually _dying. He may have, if his father had taken half a minute more to call an end to the brutal test. "I'll expect him to be prepared for lessons in the morning."

Another of the guards seemed to balk at that. Elend's lazy, fuzzy vision happened to be focused on the man's face as he frowned and glanced down, shuffling his feet uncomfortably. He was a fighting man, a known Misting, capable of burning pewter to heal himself more quickly than an average man, and even he would take more than a day and a night to recover from a beating like this one. Yet he knew better than to defy the Lord of the most powerful house in the Final Empire. His unspoken protest died within a breath as Lord Venture's piercing gaze swept over him.

Elend, still shaking and covered in sweat and blood, stayed on his knees as his father swept past, spitting into the hay at the boy's feet. Silence lingered in the aftermath of the Lord's passage, where the heir to House Venture was now left alone with two of his torturers. The guards glanced at him uneasily. If Elend had more energy to care, he might've been angry at them for not resisting his father's cruel orders – though, as minor nobility themselves, they'd have gone through the same torture when they were his age. It was just a fact of life. And anyway, Elend's vision was starting to grow black around the edges; he could barely think, much less speak, and he certainly wasn't capable of screaming at his father's soldiers.

The Pewterarm grunted and picked the boy up without asking for permission, and Elend finally passed out as even the man's careful attempt to carry the child resulted in jostling fractured bones, sending fiery spikes of agonizing pain through his body...

When he next woke, it was surrounded by soft fabrics in a darkened room. The sun was obviously at its height outside, blocked though it was by the thick drapes pulled over his room's large window. So despite his father's words the day before, he was being ignored, left alone to heal, at least for long enough. The pain now was dulled; Elend had a fractured memory of a warm liquid being forced down his throat, accompanied by his mother's voice.

He closed his eyes again and concentrated on breathing; deep, slow, in and out. It helped him focus on his body, take inventory of the damage, try to figure out how long it would last and how difficult it might be to hide the worst of it when he met with the members of other Houses. He was far too young to attend the balls, of course, but dinners were common, and there were the endless trips out to the suburbs of Luthadel. It took a lot to manage an empire, and Lord Venture travelled as much as any obligator, securing contracts and negotiations with the lesser Houses in and out of the city. And Elend, as heir, was dragged along behind him, paraded in front of the merchants and plantation lords it would someday be his job to manage. He had to look strong in front of them, always. That was one of his father's many rules.

Elend was aware of his own nakedness beneath the smooth satin bedsheets. Bandages of rough cloth scratched at his skin, and there was a splint holding his right leg stiff. A sling hung round his neck, keeping his left arm immobile so as not to exacerbate his broken wrist. His stomach was mottled with bruises of every shades from yellow to black, and broken cuts and scrapes covered much of his body. Yet he was alive, that much was obvious. He had survived. That itself should've been worth something, but Elend didn't feel much like it did. He frowned, reaching for the book on his bedside table, though it was far too dark to make out any of the words even if his head didn't feel so tender and raw that he knew he wouldn't be able to concentrate on reading. Simply holding the book made him feel more thoughtful, the heavy weight of the words fit his mood. Elend pushed the leatherbound tome under his pillow and let his eyes drift closed again.

He slept fitfully, wondering if his father might still kill him, knowing no one would question it. Two summers ago a girl from House Elariel – a cousin to the girl promised to Elend – had one day stopped attending the court gatherings where the nobility traded gossip and gambled their children like coins at a card table; she'd simply disappeared, no one spoke of her, all evidence of her existence was removed from her family's estate. She'd been a quiet thing, though kind, and a wonder with horses. Elend had enjoyed watching her care for them, in the very stables where his blood is still probably mingled with the hay. When he'd asked Shan about her, the snooty blonde had simply stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment before pointedly refusing his company for the rest of the afternoon. A blunder that had gotten Elend in trouble with _both_ of his parents. Yet what was a lecture or a simple punishment compared to the death of a young girl? She'd obviously died instead of Snapping, a truth that will forever remain unspoken. Elend's stomach twisted at the memory, and he wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't vomit again. His head pounded and his hands clenched into fists. It wasn't fair that he wasn't allowed to talk about it. It scared him, deep inside, what people didn't _see_.

He slipped out of bed, dragging his currently useless leg along as he stumbled toward the window and pressed his face to the glass. The heavy dark fabric of the drapes wrapped itself around him like a comfortable blanket, hiding him from view even if anyone were to glance up at his window; a highly unlikely occurence. There had been an ashfall, some time while he slept. Elend watched silently as a group of skaa – small ones – were herded by a taskmaster who watched lazily as the children pushed brooms larger than they were, struggling to move the piled ash out of the street. The tiniest children scrambled into the trees to shake the branches enough to send clouds of ash to the streets below, where the others waited to sweep. It was still early in the morning - the second day after Elend's failure to Snap – the red dawn was barely breaking. No one was out in the streets except for the skaa. Elend told himself he was only watching them because there was nothing else to see. Their movements drew his attention. He drew in a sharp breath as one of the small forms fell out of the tree, landing hard against the ground as a branch snapped beneath him.

As Elend watched helplessly, the taskmaster stormed over to the child, lifting the boy bodily and slamming him against the tree with enough force to shake the branches and send more ash raining down. It was enough to prove the boy still lived, at least. Despite the height of the fall and his stillness when he landed, he still moved, still breathed. The taskmaster let the boy drop to the ground, a shorter fall that time, as he pulled out his cane and cracked it down against the boy's flesh over and over, without seeming to care where it landed. Even from this distance, Elend swore he could see the biting tip of the weapon breaking the child's skin, drawing blood.

The boy whimpered and cowered, crumpled at the man's feet, and Elend watched the taskmaster mercilessly thrash the unfortunate young skaa. He watched the way the child shivered with fear and pain, and in that moment, he knew they weren't different.

_"The saddest thing about the beatings was that most of them were pointless."_


End file.
